David Portch
Recent Activity
The Toronto District School Board in Canada has just voted to create a school for black administrators, black teachers and black students. It will also teach an amended curriculum, focusing on black cultural issues and history. They have done this in order to address the black community's complaint that black youths do not relate to the current school system and are far more likely than white students to drop out of High School. What do you think of this idea? Is it a step back to segregation or a step forward to a new way of addressing inequality? … Read More
January 31, 2008 |
Why is America in denial about the origins of the world's anti American bias?
What I would like to know is how is it that in 2008, nearly seven years after the tragedy of 911, the people, politicians and culture of America still refuses to discuss the possibility that an examination of America and her actions of the last 100 years in the 3rd world and middle east may help explain why the world has an anti American political bias? The minute anyone in America even suggests that the United States is in some way responsible for her own misery, they are shouted down, made to feel unpatriotic and shoved out the door. I suggest that if Americans were more aware of the impact their foreign policy has made in the world over the last 100 years and if Americans were more worldly, they could not help but see that they are, in no small way, responsible for their current condition. This is not meant to be a debate about validating terrorism, I want it to be a debate about why America refuses to take a good long hard look at itself and consider how its' actions have contributed to the current world threat of radical belief systems. … Read More
January 17, 2008 |
David Portch commented on John McCain: What is the legacy of George W. Bush? on January 17, 2008, 5:59 PM
To say that G.W. Bush will be judged harshly is absolutely preposterous if you mean to convey that the judgement is in any way unfair. A president does not have the luxury of being a good guy who tried his best. He/she must, at best, succeed and, at worst, do nothing, in order to be favourably judged by history. Mr. Bush and his neocon puppetmasters have taken the United States of America down a path from which I see no way back. I am not an American, I am not fond of America as it is, but I love the first principles that the idea of America was based upon. Yours is a great nation with great potential, yet day after day I am forced to stand and watch Bush drive your country deeper into the abyss. It is heartbreaking. I see no way back for the culture that America has evolved for itself. Greed, hunger for victory at all costs, selfish individualism and a host of other sins have all been manifest in the person of George Bush. I'm sure he's a good well meaning man, but he works within a set of principles that have become so insanely perverse, so far from the common sense of decency that Americans have traditionally been known for in the past, that he can not help but be judged as the worst president America has ever had. i
Re: the weak argument of atheism
Technically you are correct. This is the achillies heel of lack of faith and science in general. If you are truly honest with yourself, it is impossible to make statements of belief that can be held to an absolute standard because true honesty requires we leave room for the potential to be proven incorrect. This is the strength of science and athiesm that religious faith twists into a most potent weapon. Absolute faith, by its' very nature can be, and often is, absolute. Believers think this is the strength of the position they hold. I believe that it is their greatest weakness. By leaving no room at the end of the spectrum for contrary ideas, they shut themselves off from the full potential of understanding. Athiests, on the other hand, are ridiculed for incompleteness of their belief because they do not push their belief to the end of the spectrum. That however, would modify their state of belief into a state of faith. A faith in nothingness or anti-faith if you prefer. Thus athiesm can not be absolute and is, in fact, a state of agnosticism. I call myself an athiest in order to signify that in the spectrum of agnostics, I consider myself to be at the furthest end from religious faith, without closing myself off to the potential of the universe by slipping into anti-faith. … Read More
January 17, 2008 |
David Portch commented on John McCain: What is the legacy of George W. Bush? on January 17, 2008, 10:59 PM
To say that G.W. Bush will be judged harshly is absolutely preposterous if you mean to convey that the judgement is in any way unfair. A president does not have the luxury of being a good guy who tried his best. He/she must, at best, succeed and, at worst, do nothing, in order to be favourably judged by history. Mr. Bush and his neocon puppetmasters have taken the United States of America down a path from which I see no way back. I am not an American, I am not fond of America as it is, but I love the first principles that the idea of America was based upon. Yours is a great nation with great potential, yet day after day I am forced to stand and watch Bush drive your country deeper into the abyss. It is heartbreaking. I see no way back for the culture that America has evolved for itself. Greed, hunger for victory at all costs, selfish individualism and a host of other sins have all been manifest in the person of George Bush. I'm sure he's a good well meaning man, but he works within a set of principles that have become so insanely perverse, so far from the common sense of decency that Americans have traditionally been known for in the past, that he can not help but be judged as the worst president America has ever had. i